Silverwood had an absolute shocker. As did his touch judges. Not a good day for the officials. Wigan won comfortably in the end but due to refereeing errors the game was a contest for far longer than it would otherwise have been.

Is it just me or does he seem to lose concentration and guess at decisions? When the ball comes free in a tackle he doesn't seem to have a clue. When he's on form he's the best ref in this country but I thought he was awful today, particularly 1st half.

With the best will in the world, when he looks at the video he's going to be embarrassed, surely? He missed so many things and made so many mistakes, it really wasn't good. At all.

As usual though the ref get very little assistance from the touch judges. You would think that if the referee were having an obvious off day the touch judges would try a little bit harder to help the ref.

+1

I thought our poor ball control combined with Silverwood's whistle-happy performance prolonged the contest. Shame really, I was looking forward to this game regardless of the result, and felt it was a stop-start affair. After Alibert and Thaler's incompetent performance on sky on saturday, I do despair about the style of refereeing in the competition. It's pedantic, inconsistent, and generally speaking, the performance of the referee has too much influence on the game.

That was certainly the case today.

The guy seemingly couldn't wait to blow his whistle - usually when Wigan were just getting a roll on. I agree that we weren't brilliant, but we were easily the better team. Silverwood contributed to suppressing that for two thirds of the match.

Our forwards stood up well to a very big Dragons pack. McIlorum steered us around the pack extremely well (his best game in a Wigan shirt IMO) and Gaz Hock stood out in the pack - must be pushing for England honours along with Lee Mossop. In the first half we bombed far too many chances & Catalans took advantage of that taking the lead at half-time.

Second half we still made some poor errors, but overall our passes began to stick more & once we hit top gear we never looked like losing. Les Catalans seemed to tire for me, which you must credit our kicking game/effort in the forwards. Sam/Finch/Leuluai/McIlorum/Lockers when they hit top front just tear teams apart in what appears considerable ease.

Excellent win and a brilliant crowd too. Areas to work on next week, but you can't complain too much when you still win by a healthy scoreline! Top stuff.

Hock for me was the best player and as people say his silly offload was a bad point, tbf to him both lockers and tommy was with him and tommy let the cats players get it as he should expect the offload especially from hock

Also thought lockers had another shocker in the ways of losing the ball by literally throwing the ball away in 2 good positions in the first half

Exactly. When Sam supposedly dropped the ball was a prime example. Two fat Cats all over him rip the ball free and Tricky Dicky Silverwood walks over looking and thinking "What happened here then?" because he clearly didnt have a clue so he just assumed Sam had dropped it! The tool. He missed a lot of decisions yesterday, some were so blatant it was embarrassing.

These penalties given at a whim are the most annoying aspect of Silverwood's refereeing, especially when it's so inconsistent. The incident you mention yesterday was typical. A Wigan player is tackled and the ball spurts loose from the resulting pile of bodies. Silverwood walks casually over and announces a knock-on. A few minutes later exactly the same thing happens when a Cat is tackled, and he saunters over and awards a penalty for ball-stealing. In neither situation did he see what happened. In neither situation did he apparently take advice from his touchjudges. Pathetic and infuriating. No wonder the game almost boiled over in the second half.

I wouldn't say "easy" at all, we was poor first half and the final score flattered us IMO.

Our defence was pretty good as if you look at the whole game they scored 2 tries, the first was a well worked last tackle play on the blind side, which was made easier by our player(think it was Finch) jumping out of the line to get the kicker, missed him and left a 3 onto 1 overlap. The 2nd was a soft try from the play the ball, but field position was given them by piggy back penalties. Apart from this their only other slight chances they made were in the 2nd half, Blanch on their right bundled into touch by Pat and a kick through down their left which "Eric" back tracked to clear the danger. We scored a total of 6 tries most by cutting through their defensive line and then having support players in space, plus we also bombed a few open chances. The pack controlled their attack and left them with little chance of cutting loose.

Do you think we didn't deserve that final score?

Personally, I thought it was only silly errors by Wigan players that stopped us getting several more.

I thought we played well 1st half and but for a couple of errors could have been 10/12 points in front?
Even though we made those errors our defence in the first half laid the platform for Catalan being out on their feet last 20 hence the tries late on which I think gave the scoreline a truer reflection of the game overall.

Just reading the report in today's Daily Express. Wane on Jack Hughes:
"Jack is going to be a good player, but he needed to score that first try after missing that chance. If he ever does that to me again, I will level him."
always good for a quote, Waney.